V 


GIFT   OF 


The  Man  Who  Can 

and 
Other  Addresses 

BY 

GUY  MORRISON  WALKER 


New  York 


A.  The  Man  Who  Can 

B.  The  Way  Our  Fathers  Trod 
G.  Education  and  Culture 

D.  Not  Too  Prond  To  Fight 


JWan  Wfa  Can" 


BY 

GUY  MORRISON  WALKER 


"The  Man  Who  Can." 

A  Toast  Delivered  by  GUY  MORRISON 
WALKER  at  a  Dinner  in  Honor  of 
Theodore  P.  Shonts,  Hotel  Astor,  New 
York,  March  23,  1907. 

We  are  here  tonight  to  do  honor  to  one  of 
the  world's  master  workmen — to  one  who,  after 
a  toilsome  apprenticeship  in  railroad  service, 
was  called  upon  to  produce  order  out  of  chaos 
in  Panama,  and  having  proved  there  that  he 
was  a  man  who  accomplished  results,  he  has 
just  been  called  here  to  solve  the  most  intricate 
problem  of  transportation  in  the  world. 

Now  the  development  of  transportation  fa- 
cilities is  at  the  very  foundation  of  all  material 
progress;  commerce  and  industry  wait  upon 
them  and  prosperity  and  the  increase  of  wealth 
halt  and  mark  time  when  their  advance  ceases. 

The  reward  of  labor  and  the  field  of  oppor- 
tunity are  dependent  upon  them,  for  in  the 
absence  of  transportation  facilities  and  in  the 
presence  of  a  high  cost  of  transportation,  in- 
dustry languishes,  labor  finds  little  to  do  and 
wages  remain  low,  while  as  transportation  f  acil- 

3 


ities  increase  and  transportation  rates  grow 
lower  and  cheaper,  industry  thrives,  markets 
widen,  commerce  grows  and  wages  increase  by 
leaps  and  bounds. 

It  may,  therefore,  safely  be  said  that  the 
measure  of  civilization  is  marked  by  the  devel- 
opment of  transportation  and  that  this  country 
of  ours,  which  has  levied  upon  the  world  for 
our  necessities:  this  country  in  which  the  lux- 
uries of  other  climes  have  become  common- 
place :  this  country  which  has  made  the  world's 
best  thought  its  own:  this  country  in  which 
the  science  of  transportation  has  reached  its 
highest  development,  marks  the  highest  stage 
yet  reached  in  the  onflowing  tide  of  civilization. 

And  since  transportation  is  the  measure  of 
civilization,  and  this  nation  of  ours  which  has 
developed  the  science  of  transportation  to  its 
highest  point,  is  the  most  civilized  of  nations; 
so  the  master  of  transportation,  the  highest 
type  of  the  man-who-can,  becomes  in  his  own 
person  the  most  highly  developed  example  of 
civilized  man,  and  it  is  such  a  man  that  we 
honor  here  tonight. 

Unfortunately  for  the  world's  progress,  we 
are  passing  through  a  period  of  denunciation 
of  the  man-who-can,  and  it  has  become  the  fash- 


ion  to  bemoan  the  hardships  of  the  man-who- 
can't. 

Your  attention  hardly  needs  to  be  called  to 
our  present-day  problems.  The  daily  press  is 
filled  with  accounts  of  labor  troubles,  of  strikes, 
of  frightful  accidents  and  of  daring  crimes. 
The  magazines  discuss  at  length  the  burdens 
of  capitalism,  the  ethics  of  sabotage,  the  evils 
of  railroad  management  and  the  progress  of 
government  ownership,  while  the  pulpit  wrings 
your  heart  with  its  portrayal  of  the  miseries  of 
the  poor  and  clamors  for  your  assistance  in 
building  hospitals,  rescue  homes,  day  nurseries 
and  model  tenements. 

I  have  for  some  time  felt  that  the  study  of 
these  problems  has  been  conducted  both  by  the 
pulpit  and  the  press  in  much  the  same  spirit 
as  a  friend  of  mine  described  his  experience 
with  some  German  doctors: 

While  spending  a  summer  abroad  he  found 
himself  afflicted  with  a  troublesome  pain  in  his 
side  that  interfered  very  much  with  his  study 
and  travel.  He  visited  a  doctor  in  Berlin  in 
the  hope  of  securing  relief.  The  doctor  exam- 
ined him,  thumped  him,  punched  him,  asked 
him  innumerable  questions  and  then  told  him 
to  return  the  next  day.  Returning  the  next 


day,  he  found  that  the  doctor  had  called  in  a 
couple  of  medical  friends,  and  the  three  of 
them  repeated  the  process  of  the  day  before, 
thumping,  punching  and  asking  all  manner  of 
questions. 

On  the  third  day  the  process  of  examination 
was  continued,  until,  as  my  friend  said,  the 
doctors  knew  everything  there  was  to  know 
about  that  pain,  but  it  was  still  there.  So 
hunting  up  an  American  physician,  he  was 
promptly  given  some  remedies  which  caused 
the  pain  to  disappear. 

Now  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  much  of  the 
study  of  our  present-day  problems  has  been 
conducted  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Ger- 
man doctors — to  find  out  everything  about  the 
pain,  but  to  be  absolutely  uninterested  in  its 
cause  or  removal. 

For  instance,  although  police  conditions  in 
our  city  have  been  a  cause  for  complaint  for 
years,  we  have  succeeded  one  unresponsible 
police  commissioner  with  another  equally  unre- 
sponsible without  once  seeking  the  real  source 
of  the  trouble. 

How,  let  me  ask  you,  dare  we  hold  a  police 
commissioner  responsible  for  the  control  of 
crime  in  our  city,  when  the  inspectors  and 


police  under  him  are  banded  together  in  a 
socialistic  union  for  the  purpose  of  holding 
their  positions,  and  when  they  are  made  practi- 
cally immune  from  discipline  by  law? 

A  coroner's  jury  has  spent  days  in  seeking 
to  place  the  responsibility  for  a  shocking  acci- 
dent, accusing  first  the  motorman,  then  the 
roadmaster,  then  the  division  engineer,  then 
the  superintendent,  then  the  general  manager, 
then  the  vice  president  and  finally  the  president 
and  directors  of  a  great  railroad  organization, 
whom  everyone  knows  must  have  been  too  re- 
mote from  the  accident  to  have  any  personal 
responsibility  therefor. 

But,  let  me  ask  you,  how  can  we  hold  the 
railroad  managers  of  our  country  responsible 
when  we  know  that  they  have  not  the  power,  or 
would  not  dare  if  they  did,  to  discharge  incom- 
petent or  disobedient  employees  for  fear  of  pre- 
cipitating general  strikes  by  the  unions  or- 
ganized to  protect  the  careless  and  the  incom- 
petent ? 

It  is  no  doubt  unpleasant  to  feel  that  one's 
position  is  dependent  on  the  will  or  judgment 
of  another,  but  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  noth- 
ing more  demoralizing  than  to  know  that  one 
is  immune  from  discharge,  and  moral  degener- 


ation  is  the  sure  result  of  safe  escape  from 
responsibility  for  one's  acts. 

The  growth  of  modern  socialistic  thought 
and  the  development  of  socialistic  organiza- 
tions has  gone  so  far  that  today  the  hardest 
thing  to  find  in  the  world  is  the  man  who  is 
responsible  for  anything. 

Every  investigation  degenerates  into  a 
search  for  the  man  who  is  higher  up  and  a  war- 
rant is  finally  issued  for  a  mythical  John  Doe 
who  is  never  identified. 

The  genesis  of  our  present  demoralization 
has  been,  first,  the  fear  of  the  strong,  next  the 
curbing  of  the  competent,  followed  by  diffu- 
sion of  responsibility  in  the  mass  of  the  medi- 
ocre, then  irresponsibility  and  degeneracy  and 
finally  the  enthronement  of  the  mob. 

No  falser  doctrine  has  even  been  crystallized 
into  epigram  than  that  which  proclaims  the 
VOICE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  TO  BE  THE 
VOICE  OF  GOD. 

The  theory  of  evolution,  based  on  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest,,  is  a  mere  expression  that 
some  men  are  able  to  procure  a  livelihood  under 
a  given  state  of  conditions  while  others  cannot, 
and  that  the  men  who  can  are  the  ones  who  sur- 
vive, while  those  who  cannot  are  the  ones  who 


become  extinct.  And  the  reasons  for  their  fail- 
ure are  read  in  the  mounds  and  caverns  littered 
with  their  bones. 

Under  those  primitive  conditions  that  man 
survived  who  best  learned  how  to  provide  him- 
self food,  who  best  learned  how  to  provide 
himself  shelter,  and  the  first  home  was  estab- 
lished by  the  man  who  first  learned  how  to 
carry  back  to  his  cave  or  his  tree  the  food  to 
which  he  had  previously  been  compelled  to 
bring  his  family. 

When  floods  came  or  seasons  changed,  that 
man  survived  who  had  best  learned  how  to 
transport  himself  and  his  family  to  a  place  of 
safety  or  to  a  warmer  climate. 

Have  you  ever  considered  the  courage  that 
was  required  in  the  first  man  who  trusted  him- 
self to  a  log  or  a  raft  and  attempted  to  float 
across  a  river?  Or  how  far  a  step  it  is  from 
him  to  the  man  who  for  the  first  time  was  able 
to  bend  the  wind  to  his  will — and  having 
learned  to  sail  into  the  teeth  of  the  gale,  dared 
to  venture  out  upon  unknown  seas?  Yet  it 
was  not  until  the  man  who  could  do  this  had 
arrived  that  our  continent  was  discovered! 

Since  the  world  began  there  have  been  two 
kinds  of  men  in  it— the  MAN  WHO  CAN 


and  the  man  who  can't.  The  leaders  of  the 
race  have  always  been  the  MEN  WHO 
COULD!  The  man  who  could  make  paths 
through  the  wilderness;  the  man  who  built 
cities,  schools  and  churches  where  forests  or 
deserts  stood  before;  the  man  who  made  the 
remotest  corners  of  the  earth  accessible  through 
bands  of  steel  and  hissing  engines.  And  now 
the  leaders  are  those  who  are  rivalling  the  birds 
of  the  air  and  the  fish  under  the  seas,  who  han- 
dle the  lightning  with  impunity  and  speak  in 
voices  that  can  be  understood  across  continents 
and  under  the  oceans. 

Practically  every  invention  and  device  has 
been  the  vision  of  a  single  man  who  has  not 
only  seen  the  need  but  the  way  to  satisfy  it.  It 
is  but  simple  history  to  say  that  these  men  who 
have  accomplished  these  wonderful  things  from 
which  the  whole  race  has  benefitted,  have  not 
only  not  had  the  support  of  their  fellows  but 
have  usually  been  laughed  at  with  scorn  and 
derision,  while  they  labored  for  the  benefit  of 
those  who  derided  them.  Almost  every  device 
and  every  invention,  whether  it  be  for  multiply- 
ing comfort  or  saving  labor  or  time  has  made 
its  way  in  spite  of  the  inertia  of  the  great  mass 
of  the  race  and  usually  over  the  vigorous  pro- 

10 


tests  of  those  who  were  satisfied  with  conditions 
as  they  were. 

It  is  amusing  now  to  read  the  protests  and 
objections  that  were  made  against  the  intro- 
duction of  steamships ;  against  the  introduction 
of  gas  light;  against  the  introduction  of  rail- 
ways, where  it  was  solemnly  argued  that  the 
fumes  from  the  locomotives  would  stifle  and 
kill  all  the  birds  in  the  air! 

Yet,  regardless  of  all  this,  the  men  who  could 
do  these  things,  have  dreamed  and  experi- 
mented and  in  solitude  attempted  to  solve  the 
problems  believed  by  the  masses  to  be  impos- 
sible of  solution.  Asking  nothing  of  their  fel- 
lows but  that  the  new  inventions  and  devices 
be  tested  and  tried  while  the  race,  looking  on 
first  with  scorn  and  then  with  mild  interest,  has 
not  hesitated  to  appropriate  without  a  word  of 
thanks  whatever  it  found  to  its  advantage  to 
use. 

The  same  thing  is  true  in  regard  to  the  devel- 
opment of  the  race,  intellectually  and  spiri- 
tually. The  progress  of  the  race  toward  politi- 
cal liberty  and  into  spiritual  freedom  from  the 
bondage  of  superstition,  ignorance  and  tradi- 
tion has  not  been  through  any  movement  of  the 
mass,  but  through  the  medium  of  independent 

11 


and  fearless  individuals  who  have  poured  the 
truth  into  unwilling  ears.  It  is  to  the  MEN 
WHO  CAN  that  the  world  owes  its  progress. 
To  the  men  who  have  insisted  upon  thinking 
for  themselves  and  living  their  own  lives.  To 
the  men  who  have  dared  to  proclaim  their  dis- 
coveries in  science  and  to  maintain  their  theo- 
ries of  human  rights.  To  the  men  who  have 
known  their  powers  and  have  taken  the  oppor- 
tunity to  use  them. 

Socrates,  whose  sayings,  recorded  by  Plato, 
have  been  treasured  through  the  centuries  as 
the  beginning  of  wisdom,  was  condemned  as  a 
Corruptor  of  the  Youth! 

John  the  Baptist  paid  with  his  life  for  the 
privilege  of  denouncing  wickedness ! 

The  spirit  of  religious  liberty  rose  with  the 
soul  of  John  Huss  from  the  flames  that  con- 
sumed his  body. 

The  pretenses  of  royalty  and  the  doctrine  of 
the  divine  right  of  kings  were  successfully 
maintained  for  centuries  against  every  species 
of  argument,  but  they  have  never  recovered 
from  the  violence  done  them  by  a  Napoleon, 
who  from  the  humblest  origin  made  himself 
the  master  of  kings. 

The  political  freedom  of  our  country  was 

12 


won  not  by  a  Jefferson  who  remained  inactive 
while  straining  his  ear  to  hear  the  people's 
voice,  but  by  a  Washington,  who  in  the  soli- 
tude of  the  wilderness  had  come  to  learn  his 
own  power.  Confident  of  his  own  judgment, 
firm  in  his  own  faith,  he  pursued  his  way  heed- 
less of  criticism,  ignoring  even  the  bitterest 
personal  attacks. 

And  slavery  remained  intrenched  until  a 
John  Brown  dared  to  set  his  personal  judg- 
ment against  that  of  a  whole  nation. 

The  MAN  WHO  CAN  is  always  a  lonely 
soul,  and  the  world  has  usually  made  him  pay 
dearly  for  disturbing  its  ease  and  challenging 
its  self-conceit.  But  each  generation  of  man- 
kind has  been  busy  building  monuments  to 
those  men  whose  burning  words  punished  the 
ears  of  their  forefathers. 

Yes,  the  world  owes  its  progress  to  the 
MAN  WHO  CAN,  and  history  is  made  up  of 
the  record  of  those  great  souls  whose  vision  and 
whose  hope  for  their  race  has  been  limited  only 
by  the  Infinite.  And  the  higher  each  succeed- 
ing individual  has  gone  along  his  solitary  way, 
the  higher  he  has  dragged  the  race  after  him. 

But  it  takes  tremendous  energy  and  tremen- 
dous force  to  overcome  the  mere  inertia  of  the 

13 


mass  of  the  people.  Now  the  expenditure  of 
great  power  can  never  be  done  gently.  So  the 
leaders  of  the  race,  though  often  kind  and  ten- 
der in  their  treatment  of  individuals,  have 
seemed  cold  and  pitiless  when  dealing  with 
mankind  in  the  mass. 

Napoleon  has  been  criticized  because  of  the 
number  of  men  sacrificed  to  gratify  his  per- 
sonal ambition,  and  it  has  become  the  fashion  to 
belittle  his  achievements  because  of  the  vast 
multitudes  upon  whom  he  trod  in  his  ascent 
to  the  height  to  which  his  abilities  enabled  him 
to  mount.  But  when  we  consider  the  myriads 
whose  lives  and  treasure  had  been  claimed  by 
royalty  as  its  due,  the  thousands  sacrificed  by 
Napoleon  seem  a  paltry  price  to  pay  for  the 
release  of  the  race  from  the  political  tradition 
by  which  it  was  bound  up  to  his  time. 

Grant  was  bitterly  criticized  for  his  prodigal 
expenditure  of  men  to  accomplish  the  defeat 
of  Lee.  But  where,  let  me  ask  you,  would  our 
Republic  have  been  today  had  Lincoln  been 
swerved  from  his  purpose  by  the  protest 
against  the  slaughter  of  his  soldiers?  The  fact 
is  that  great  progress  can  be  had  only  at  tre- 
mendous cost.  And  the  people,  had  they  been 
given  the  opportunity  to  consider  the  price, 

14 


would  have  refused  to  pay.  How  much,  do 
you  think,  would  the  surgeon  accomplish  if  he 
hesitated  at  the  thought  of  the  pain  of  his 
mangled  patient  or  if  he  trembled  at  the  sound 
of  a  moan?  The  work  of  the  world  must  be 
done  in  an  impersonal  manner,  for  clear  vision 
is  not  had  through  tear-dimmed  eyes,  nor  is 
sound  judgment  had  by  giving  ear  to  the 
pleadings  of  anguish. 

Do  you  think  that  when  Christ  laid  that  in- 
junction upon  his  Apostles  to  spread  the  Gos- 
pel throughout  the  earth,  that  He  could  have 
been  ignorant  of  the  suffering  and  death  in 
store  for  His  followers  or  of  the  martyrdom 
necessary  to  establish  His  kingdom  upon  earth  ? 

Such  a  philosophy  may  sound  harsh  and 
cruel  and  many  will  doubtless  condemn  it  as 
tin-Christian,  but  the  answer  is  that  there  is 
nothing  Socialistic  in  Christianity.  On  the  con- 
trary, that  lonely  soul  who  toiled  up  the  weary 
slopes  of  Golgotha,  bearing  His  cross  alone, 
was  the  greatest  individualist  that  ever  trod  this 
earth.  I  do  not  ask  anyone  to  accept  Him  as 
a  divinity — consider  Him  as  a  man.  His  life 
was  typical  in  its  loneliness  of  those  great  men 
who  have  shown  the  way. 

Have  you  ever  understood  the  significance 

15 


of  His  sojourn  in  the  Wilderness  ?  It  is  a  mere 
figure  of  speech  and  symbolized  only  that  aloof- 
ness during  which  He  struggled  to  realize  His 
mission.  When  the  problem  pressed,  He  did 
not  seek  His  friends.  He  did  not  seek  the 
advice  of  His  brothers  or  His  sisters — no,  not 
even  His  mother.  But  alone,  He  struggled  to 
decide  within  His  own  mind  whether  or  not 
He  could  endure  to  pursue  that  mission  to  the 
end.  Alone — in  solitude,  in  the  wilderness- 
He  sought  the  answer! 

And  at  Gethsemane,  it  was  not  among  His 
disciples,  not  among  those  who  loved  Him, 
that  He  sought  the  answer,  but  again  alone  and 
apart,  and  the  question  that  He  asked  of  Him- 
self was,  Can  I  endure?  Nor  did  He  cease 
praying  until  the  answer  came — I  Can! 

Then  see  Christ  at  His  trial.  Again  alone. 
Where  are  the  throngs  that  crowded  about  to 
listen  to  His  teachings  and  parables?  The 
question  hurled  at  Him  is  the  one  always 
hurled  at  the  man  who  can,  "Art  thou  He  who 
troubleth  Israel?" 

Then  watch  Him  mount  Golgotha — still 
alone.  Is  there  a  more  helpless,  a  more  pitiful 
figure  in  the  world's  history  than  that  frail 

16 


body  hanging  on  the  cross,  beautiful  like  a 
crushed  flower,  the  long  curls  of  His  hair  damp 
with  the  sweat  of  suffering.  What  can  He  do 
now?  To  Himself  He  said,  It  is  finished.  He 
had  proved  the  answer  at  Gethsemane. 
What  can  He  do?  He  can  endure!  He  can 
die!  Yes,  He  can  die  without  a  whimper,  and 
He  did  die  in  such  a  way  as  to  command  the 
respect  even  of  those  who  mocked  Him.  And, 
lifted  up,  He  has  drawn  the  world  unto  Him. 
I  once  heard  Oscar  Hammerstein  describe 
how  he  came  to  undertake  alone,  without  sup- 
port or  financial  backing,  the  gigantic  task  of 
reviving  opera  in  New  York.  It  was  inter- 
esting, because  I  have  never  heard  another  man 
make  such  a  self-revelation.  He  told  how  the 
music  of  New  York  had  become  vulgar  and 
slovenly  and  how  his  soul  had  cried  out  for  such 
music  as  he  felt  somewhere,  somehow,  could  be 
produced — and  that  someone  ought.  That's 
what  we  all  say — someone  ought  to  do  some- 
thing— to  better  the  conditions.  When  it  sud- 
denly came  to  him  that  he  was  the  man,  "I  am 
the  man  to  do  it"  he  said  to  himself,  and  with 
that  conviction  he  undertook  alone  and  accom- 
plished unaided  those  results  that  remain  a 
blessed  memory  with  those  who  \vere  so  fortu- 

17 


nate  as  to  hear  the  music  that  he  caused  to  be 
produced. 

The  need  of  the  world  today,  as  it  has  ever 
been,  is  for  the  MAN  WHO  CAN!  For  the 
man  who  is  not  afraid  to  take  responsibility. 
For  the  man  able  and  willing  to  assume  Lead- 
ership. For  the  man  who  dares  to  do.  Now  the 
man  who  can  is  the  one  who  first  takes  care  of 
himself.  His  philosophy  makes  it  impossible 
for  him  to  remain  dependent  upon  another. 
Have  you  ever  thought  what  a  world  this  would 
be  if  everyone  in  it  was  able  to  take  care  of  him- 
self, if  none  of  the  able  were  weighted  with 
the  care  of  the  unable.  The  burden  of  the 
strong  has  ever  been  the  care  of  the  weak  and 
the  incompetent.  And  so  the  man  who  can 
must  recognize  that  his  ability  to  do  for  others 
is  measured  by  the  strength  which  he  can  ac- 
quire for  himself,  that  he  can  do  the  most  for 
his  race  by  first  doing  the  most  for  himself.  It 
is  therefore  the  duty  of  the  MAN  WHO  CAN 
to  develop  himself  to  the  highest  possible  de- 
gree. But  how  are  such  men  to  be  developed? 
Certainly  not  by  teaching  them  to  follow  the 
leadership  of  others.  To  produce  character, 
there  must  be  freedom  of  will  and  responsibility 
for  one's  acts.  INITIATIVE  will  never  de- 
is 


velop  in  those  trained  to  servile  obedience,  nor 
COURAGE  in  those  who  are  frightened  by 
tales  of  bloodshed  and  suffering,  and  the  fruits 
of  success  must  follow  intelligent  effort  if  am- 
bition is  to  be  kept  alive. 

Please  remember  when  considering  the  prob- 
lem of  labor,  that  primitive  man  did  not  work, 
and  that  the  habit  in  civilized  man  of  sustained 
effort  has  only  been  acquired  through  genera- 
tions of  ancestors  who  were  driven  to  their  task 
by  the  lash,  and  remember,  too,  that  some  fam- 
ilies in  our  race  have  not  yet  behind  them 
enough  generations  of  workers  to  have  acquired 
themselves  the  habit  of  work,  and  so  the  process 
of  their  education  must  be  continued  in  our 
time. 

No  movement  so  ill-advised,  so  unscientific 
and  so  uneconomic  has  occurred  in  our  national 
life  as  the  recent  socialistic  onslaught  upon  the 
militant  individuals  of  our  times.  A  movement 
which  has  had  for  its  purpose  not  the  pulling 
of  the  mass  on  toward  the  standard  of  achieve- 
ment reached  by  a  few,  but  an  attack  on  the 
men  who  can  because  they  can  for  the  purpose 
of  dragging  them  back  into  the  pack. 

All  the  legislation  in  the  world  cannot  relieve 

19 


us  from  the  pinch  of  competition  with  keener 
wits  and  firmer  wills. 

No  greater  folly  can  be  imagined  than  to 
suppose  that  sound  conclusions  can  be  had  by 
the  submission  to  popular  vote  of  such  intricate 
problems  as  the  Tariff,  the  Currency,  Ship 
Subsidies  and  the  Management  of  Transpor- 
tation. 

The  spectacle  of  a  Foraker  standing  in  the 
Senate  fighting  for  good  law  and  sound  eco- 
nomics, daring  to  be  right  and  alone,  has  in  it 
far  more  of  hope  for  the  future  of  the  race  than 
the  spectacle  of  a  Hearst,  a  Bryan  or  a  Roose- 
velt running  with  the  baying  pack. 

The  present  attitude  of  the  public  mind  is 
not  a  normal  condition.  The  protest  of  organ- 
ized incompetence  and  banded  mediocrity  will 
die  away  and  the  philosophy  of  individualism 
will  remain  triumphant.  Out  of  the  depths  will 
rise  still  stronger  men  to  drag  the  mass  of  the 
race  onward  and  upward  as  they  have  been 
dragged  in  the  past.  And  so  I  bespeak  the 
RIGHT  OF  THE  MAN  WHO  CAN,  and 
claim  for  him  the  right  to  use  not  only  in  his 
own  development  but  in  the  doing  of  his  world 
work  such  instruments  as  he  may  find  at  hand. 

20 


For  if  there  is  a  God  who  uses  our  race  to  ac- 
complish His  mysterious  purposes,  then  they 
are  the  Sons  of  God,  the  nearest  His  image, 
who  make  the  greatest  and  best  use  of  the  Sons 
of  Men. 

Are  you  looking  for  your  work  in  the  world? 
Do  you  seek  to  know  your  mission? 

If  you  would  find  it,  you  must  retire  into 
your  wilderness.  It  may  be  a  back  bedroom. 
You  may  find  it  even  in  these  crowded  streets  if 
you  are  intellectually  and  spiritually  alone  or 
aloof.  Or  are  you  waiting  for  your  friends  to 
start  something  so  that  you  can  join  in  with 
them?  Go!  There  is  too  much  in  the  world 
that  needs  to  be  done,  waiting  for  the  man  who 
can.  Get  you — each  one  of  you — into  your 
own  wilderness  and  it  may  be  that  to  you  will 
come  the  conviction,  I  AM  THE  MAN,  and 
that  with  that  conviction  your  life  work  will 
begin.  What?  Do  you  doubt  whether  you 
can?  Is  the  sacrifice  too  great?  Then  seek 
your  Gethsemane!  Perchance  you  may  learn 
there  not  only  that  you  are  the  man  but  that 
you  can— YOU  CAN! 


21 


The   Way   Our 
Fathers  Trod 


BY 

GUY  MORRISON  WALKER 


The  Way  Our  Fathers 
Trod. 

A  Toast  delivered  by  Guy  Morrison  Walker 
at  the  Banquet  of  the  Phi  Kappa  Psi  Fra- 
ternity in  Boston,  April  10th,  1909. 

"It  was  not  so  in  the  days  of  Moses  and  the 
Prophets,"  so  said  the  old  Jews  to  the  young 
Jews,  and  from  that  day  to  this,  scant  attention 
has  been  paid  to  those  who  harked  back  to  the 
good  old  days.  And  so  tonight,  if  I  speak  of 
the  ways  in  which  our  fathers  trod,  I  do  not  ask 
you  to  agree  with  me,  but  only  ask  that  you 
listen  in  patience  and  afterwards  that  you 
think. 

We  are  passing  through  a  period  of  great 
unrest.  Our  social,  our  religious,  and  even  our 
political  organizations  are  drifting  far  from 
their  old  anchorages.  A  great  political  organ- 
ization, claiming  descent  from  Jefferson,  has 
made  a  party  shiboleth  of  a  doctrine  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  everything  that  Jefferson 
taught.  A  Roosevelt  has  seized  the  control  of 
the  party  of  conservatism,  and  made  it  the  in- 


strument  of  the  wildest  attack  on  our  judicial 
system  and  on  the  recognized  rights  of  prop- 
erty, that  our  country  has  yet  seen.  These  are 
the  days  of  the  iconoclasts,  and  few  are  the 
ideals  that  they  have  not  tried  to  overthrow, 
nor  indeed  are  their  attacks  on  the  ancient 
landmarks  to  be  wondered  at,  for  have  they  not 
had  high  example?  The  question — "What  is 
the  Constitution  between  Friends?"  has  been 
answered  by  the  Chief  Executive  of  this  Na- 
tion, who  has  sworn  to  preserve  it  and  observe 
its  conditions,  to  be  nothing. 

With  this  spirit  abroad,  it  would  have  been 
strange  indeed  if  our  organization  had  escaped 
the  infection,  and  unfortunately  it  has  not.  Our 
Constitution  has  been  changed  from  a  simple 
declaration  of  principles  to  a  voluminous  treat- 
ise attempting  to  anticipate  and  prescribe  in 
advance,  rules  to  cover  any  and  all  possible  con- 
duct of  undergraduates  or  alumni.  Examina- 
tions as  inquisitorial  and  reports  as  exhaustive 
and  voluminous  as  those  asked  of  the  railroad 
corporations  by  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission, are  required  of  undergraduate  officers, 
who  ought  to  spend  their  time  conjugating 
Latin  verbs  and  getting  acquainted  with  their 
logarithm  tables.  They  are  required  to  keep 


more  and  more  books,  more  and  more  blanks 
are  sent  to  them  to  fill  out,  until  our  poor  under- 
graduates are  involved  in  a  mass  of  red-tape 
that  makes  their  fraternity  association  burden- 
some, and  that  causes  alumni  associations  to 
fall  apart  and  disorganize  rather  than  to  bother 
with  the  nuisances.  Fraternity  taxes  have  been 
increased,  salaries  voted  to  offices  in  which  our 
fathers  served  as  a  labor  of  love,  and  then  these 
salaries  have  been  increased  to  use  up  the  sur- 
plus created  by  increased  taxes.  New  offices 
have  been  created  and  junketing  trips  indulged 
in  until  it  is  not  hard  to  see  where  it  will  all  end 
unless  something  is  done  to  arrest  the  move- 
ment. Nor  have  we  escaped  having  officers 
who  have  prostituted  their  places  to  promote 
their  personal  fame,  or  who  have  ignored  con- 
stitutional provisions  to  reward  personal  favor- 
ites and  to  gratify  personal  spites. 

Our  country  has  grown  and  our  organiza- 
tion has  grown  with  it,  and  no  one  would  claim 
that  the  machinery  of  those  early  days  would 
be  adequate  to  handle  the  organizations  of  this 
time,  nor  can  any  exception  be  taken  to  neces- 
sary constitutional  revisions  that  respect  the 
principles  of  the  organization  and  the  purposes 
of  those  who  founded  it.  But  there  are  still 


some  of  us  who  recognize  the  incongruity  of 
using  a  church  organization  to  promote  prize 
fights,  or  a  Young  Women's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation as  an  instrument  to  distribute  erotic 
literature,  and  so  we  protest  against  those 
changes  which,  pretending  to  be  a  revision,  are 
in  fact  a  transformation  of  the  very  character 
of  the  organization.  We  object  to  having  a 
thing  of  the  soul  reduced  to  the  level  of  a  soci- 
ety paying  out  sick  benefits  in  return  for  pre- 
miums. We  cannot  see  how  the  best  instincts 
of  the  heart  are  to  be  encouraged  by  a  club 
whose  chief  service  is  to  furnish  its  members 
a  place  where  they  can  buy  their  drinks  on 
credit.  Yet  how  can  you  wonder  at  the  waning 
efficiency  and  the  lack  of  results,  when  it  is 
plain  that  the  elaborate  machine  that  has  been 
built  up  is  absorbing  all  of  the  energy?  How 
can  you  complain  of  loss  of  spirit  and  enthusi- 
asm when  you  deny  to  sentiment  the  occasion 
and  means  of  expression? 

A  college  fraternity  is  a  thing  of  sentiment, 
and  everything  that  will  cultivate  or  heighten 
the  sentiment  about  it  should  be  encouraged. 
The  most  natural  way  of  expressing  sentiment 
in  connection  with  such  an  organization  has 
been  through  the  varied  use  of  fraternity  em- 

6 


blems,  but  the  time  honored  custom  of  giving 
your  badge  to  be  worn  by  the  girl  you  expect 
to  marry  has  been  forbidden  to  gratify  the 
grudge  of  a  man  disappointed  in  love,  who 
being  unable  to  get  a  woman  to  wear  his  em- 
blem, has  sworn  a  vow  to  permit  no  woman  to 
wear  a  similar  one. 

It  is  this  spirit,  denouncing  and  making  ille- 
gal every  time-honored  custom  of  the  past,  that 
is  strangling  the  spirit  of  fraternity!  That 
spirit  which  has  made  the  fraternity  so  much  to 
those  of  us  who  in  our  moments  of  exaltation 
have  seen  the  influence  of  its  flaming  altar  on 
the  hearts  of  those  gathered  about  it.  But  the 
ashes  of  decaying  hearts  have  dampened  the 
flame  on  its  altars,  and  they  must  be  brushed 
aside,  and  the  old  spirit  fanned  again  into 
flames  to  quicken  the  pulse  of  the  pulseless,  to 
revive  the  sense  of  the  senseless,  and  to  put 
soul  into  the  soulless! 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  ask  you  tonight 
to  turn  back  to  the  old  Phi  Psi  way — the  way 
in  which  our  fathers  trod!  Do  you  remember 
how  the  Phi  Kappa  Psi  Fraternity  came  into 
existence?  How  a  little  over  fifty  years  ago, 
two  college  students  in  a  little  town  in  the  hills 
of  Western  Pennsylvania  were  nursing  and 

7 


watching  their  stricken  fellow-students  while 
an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever  raged  through  the 
college.  During  the  long  night  vigils,  a  new 
light  dawned  on  their  spiritual  vision,  its  rays 
shone  deep  into  their  souls,  and  the  great  joy 
of  serving  others  came  into  their  lives. 

I  remember  hearing  once,  a  Phi  Psi,  who  had 
joined  many  organizations,  making  the  state- 
ment that  all  the  other  organizations  that  he 
had  joined  had  been  organized  or  formed  to 
teach  some  particular  principle  or  to  inculcate 
some  especial  doctrine,  but  that  Phi  Kappa  Psi 
alone  was  the  expression  of  a  principle  already 
known  and  understood.  He  was  right,  for  Phi 
Kappa  Psi  is  the  expression  of  a  principle,  or 
rather  Phi  Kappa  Psi  is  the  expression  of  a 
spirit,  and  that  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  service! 

When  you  remember  the  conditions  under 
which  the  fraternity  sprang  into  life,  the  spirit 
of  loving  service  which  moved  our  founders  as 
they  moved  among  and  administered  to  their 
sick  and  dying  fellow-students,  you  can  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  that  fine  old  ritual  of 
ours,  with  its  references  to  sickness  and  disease, 
and  our  mission  of  service,  of  death  clad  in 
Gorgon  horrors,  and  the  closing  of  the  eyes  as 
the  pure  spirit  winged  its  Heavenward  flight. 


But  as  a  generation  has  arisen  in  this  country 
that  knows  nothing  of  the  purposes  of  the 
founders  of  our  Nation,  so  there  is  a  generation 
in  our  fraternity  that  knows  nothing  of  the 
origin  of  Phi  Kappa  Psi  or  of  the  principles 
that  moved  its  founders.  They  have  repudi- 
ated its  spirit  of  service — on  their  unsympa- 
thetic ears  that  beautiful  ritual  fell  without 
meaning — they  declared  it  to  be  sophomoric, 
and  so  they  revised  it  and  cut  out  of  it  every- 
thing that  would  remind  one  of  hearts  aching 
for  the  loss  of  friends,  or  of  souls  striving  to 
bridge  the  gap  between  those  who  remained 
and  those  who  had  gone  before,  everything  that 
would  suggest  to  anxious  minds  the  duty  and 
joy  of  service.  The  heart  of  Phi  Kappa  Psi 
was  cut  out  by  those  who  never  knew  its  mean- 
ing! It  is  against  such  revisions  as  this  that  I 
protest — revisions  that  rob  the  fraternity  of 
the  spirit  that  created  it,  that  rob  it  of  the  soul 
that  has  kept  it  alive,  revisions  that  leave  it 
little  excuse  for  existence  and  small  claim  on 
the  interest  or  love  of  those  whose  allegiance 
it  now  invites,  and  this  is  why  I  call  you  back 
to  the  old  Phi  Psi  way,  the  way  our  founders 
and  our  fathers  trod! 


The  way  of  Letterman,  who  spent  his  life 
in  service,  who  followed  the  Armies  both  of  the 
North  and  of  the  South,  ministering  to  the 
wounded  and  the  sick  and  burying  the  dead. 
Back  to  the  way  of  Moore,  who  spent  his  life 
in  service,  dealing  justice  between  his  fellow- 
men  and  giving  freely  of  his  counsel,  sane  and 
fair.  The  way  of  Tom  Campbell,  ministering 
to  sick  souls  and  reviving  courage  in  the  dis- 
heartened. To  the  way  of  Sam  Nichols,  called 
the  Bishop  of  St.  Louis,  beloved  by  his  whole 
city,  among  whom  he  has  ministered  for  forty 
years.  It  was  he  who  wrote  that  old  ritual  dis- 
carded by  these  modern  iconoclasts  as  sopho- 
moric!  And  he  has  proven  his  belief  in  its 
truth  by  a  life  time  spent  in  following  its  pre- 
cepts. 

The  Chinese  have  in  their  ideographic  lan- 
guage, some  beautiful  and  most  expressive 
symbols.  The  symbol  of  the  human  heart  is 
the  lotus  bud,  which  so  much  resembles  it  in  size 
and  shape  and  color,  and  drawing  a  bar  across 
the  ideograph  of  the  lotus  bud,  which  stands 
for  the  human  heart,  creates  a  new  meaning— 
a  meaning  interpreted  by  the  word  MUST  or 
NECESSITY,  meaning  that  something 

10 


weighs  on  the  heart  so  heavily  as  to  force  or 
drive  the  person  under  that  weight  to  action. 

Those  old  founders  of  Phi  Kappa  Psi  had 
the  bar  across  their  hearts,  and  they  were  driven 
by  their  knowledge  of  suffering  and  unhappi- 
ness  and  ignorance  to  serve  their  fellowmen. 

There  is  another  thing  about  the  way  our 
fathers  trod  that  will  probably  surprise  most 
of  you.  We  call  our  organization  a  college 
fraternity,  but  many  of  our  early  members  were 
not  only  not  in  college,  but  were  not  college 
men  at  all.  Desiring  to  know  something  of  the 
men  who  founded  our  fraternity,  I  took  a  copy 
of  the  earliest  catalog  and  went  with  it  to  spend 
an  evening  at  the  home  of  S.  T.  D.  Dodd,  and 
going  over  the  names  one  by  one  I  found  that 
one  was  a  druggist  in  the  town — a  splendid  fel- 
low, Dodd  said,  who  had  been  of  great  help  to 
Letterman  and  Moore  during  the  epidemic,  so 
he  was  taken  in.  Another  was  a  Doctor — a 
rare  soul,  Dodd  called  him — one  who  had 
helped  serve,  so  we  took  him  in.  Still  another 
was  a  Doctor  from  a  neighboring  town,  twelve 
miles  away,  who  came  over  to  help,  and  so  our 
fathers  took  him  into  their  circle. 

Phi  Kappa  Psi  in  its  founding  was  not  a 
thing  of  college  but  a  thing  of  life !    A  f rater- 

11 


nity  founded  to  supplement  the  work  of  the 
college  and  the  university  by  cultivating  those 
humanities  without  which  the  educated  man 
would  fail  of  his  greatest  usefulness. 

Our  founders  are  dead,  and  the  modern  gen- 
eration, repudiating  the  obligation  of  service, 
has  stricken  from  the  Constitution  the  things 
of  the  heart  and  from  the  ritual  those  things 
that  move  souls,  but  there  are  still  alive  some 
who  serve  in  the  old  way. 

The  spectacle  of  a  Foraker  standing  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States,  fighting  for  good 
law  and  sound  economics,  trying  to  save  our 
people  from  their  own  hysteria,  daring  to  be 
right  and  alone,  though  he  knew  it  meant  his 
own  political  destruction,  has  in  it  far  more 
of  hope  for  the  future  of  the  race  than  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  Hearst,  a  Bryan,  or  a  Roosevelt  run- 
ning with  the  baying  pack!  Who  else,  but  one 
who  truly  knew  the  spirit  of  service  and  who 
had  the  bar  across  his  heart,  would  have  de- 
manded and  secured  justice  for  the  negro  sol- 
diers at  Brownsville,  when  the  President,  with 
the  approval  of  the  whole  country,  had  sealed 
the  judgment  of  their  disgrace?  One  of  our 
New  York  papers  speaking  of  this  said: 
"There  would  have  been  no  justice  for  the  dis- 

12 


charged  soldiers,  if  Mr.  Foraker  had  not  taken 
up  their  cause  in  the  face  of  odds  that  made  it 
appear  the  forlornest  of  hopes.  He  stood 
alone,  confronted  by  a  hostile  majority  and 
with  nothing  to  sustain  him  but  the  conscious- 
ness that  a  great  wrong  had  been  done.  In  the 
history  of  our  government  and  in  the  annals  of 
jurisprudence  there  has  never  been  such  an 
example  of  high  courage  and  masterful  intelli- 
gence in  the  defense  of  the  victims  of  arbitrary 
power." 

Yes,  thank  God,  there  are  still  some  whose 
minds  cannot  be  clouded  by  sophistry  and  un- 
truth, some  whose  ethical  sense  is  so  developed 
that  they  cannot  compromise  with  injustice, 
some  across  whose  hearts  is  laid  the  bar  of 
service,  and  they  must  serve  though  they  serve 
alone ! 

This,  my  brothers,  is  the  true  Phi  Psi  way! 
The  way  in  which  our  fathers  trod! 

It  is  the  way  in  which  my  father  trod,  and 
the  spirit  of  service  has  led  him  across  the  ocean 
to  spend  his  life  as  a  Missionary  in  China,  car- 
rying the  flame  from  the  altar  of  service  to  that 
far  foreign  land. 

It  is  the  way  in  which  I  must  walk,  though 
I  struggle  with  difficulty  to  put  my  feet  in  the 

13 


footprints  of  the  fathers  who  have  trod  it  be- 
fore me. 

I  remember  as  a  young  man,  when  I  had 
just  started  in  life,  that  older  men  constantly 
advised  me  to  compromise,  but  the  only  mis- 
takes in  my  life  that  I  recall  with  regret  are 
the  times  that  I  permitted  myself  to  be  moved 
by  the  peace-makers.  I  know  now  that  there 
can  be  no  compromise  with  the  untrue. 

The  day  of  whispering  is  past.  You  have  no 
right  to  say  a  thing  at  all  if  you  are  afraid  to 
say  it  out  loud,  but  if  a  thing  is  true,  say  it  out 
loud  and  stick  to  it. 

You  must  see  the  results  of  wandering  from 
the  way,  you  must  know  what  life  means.  And 
so  tonight  I  call  on  you  to  repudiate  those  who 
have  repudiated  the  spirit  of  service!  I  call  on 
you  to  disown  those  who  would  live  for  selfish 
personal  satisfaction,  and  who  deny  responsi- 
bility for  the  help  that  they  can  and  ought  to 
give  to  others.  The  cultivated  mind,  the  strong 
heart,  the  exultant  soul,  demand  activity.  Phi 
Kappa  Psi  believes  that  they  should  be  used  for 
the  benefit  of  our  fellowmen,  and  she  seeks  to 
develop  among  her  members  a  purpose  so  to  use 
theirs. 

14 


As  we  tonight  gather  about  the  Altar  of  Phi 
Kappa  Psi,  let  us  remember  the  way  our 
fathers  trod.  May  our  minds  be  clear  to  know 
the  right.  May  the  burden  of  necessity  be 
laid  upon  our  hearts  and  move  us  to  service. 
May  our  souls  be  lifted  up  by  the  exaltation  of 
that  MUST  which  seeks  active  experience  in 
life.  For  listen  to  the  mystery  of  mysteries— 
who  so  seeketh  his  life  (in  selfishness  and  in 
greed)  shall  lose  it,  but  whosoloseth  his  life 
(that  is  who  spends  it  in  service)  the  same 
shall  find  it! 

This  is  the  way  our  fathers  trod !  The  path  of 
service  is  the  way  of  Life. 


15 


Extemporaneous 

Remarks  On  Education 


BY 

GUY  MORRISON  WALKER 


Extemporaneous    Remarks 
Ou  Education 

BY 

GUY  M.WALKER 

ALUMNI  DAY — DEPAUW  UNIVERSITY 

June,  1916 

I  just  came  in,  and  have  been  so  busy  greet- 
ing my  old  college  mates  that  I  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  Dr.  Gobin's  introductory  remarks,  ex- 
cept to  wonder,  once  or  twice,  who  it  could 
possibly  be  that  he  was  taking  so  long  to  intro- 
duce. I  did  not  hear  what  the  Doctor  said, 
and  so  am  at  a  loss  to  know  how  to  respond. 
But  there  is  probably  no  alumnus  of  DePauw 
who  is  so  truly  the  child  of  this  College  and  the 
heir  of  its  traditions  as  myself. 

My  great-grandfather,  Daniel  DeMotte, 
was  here  or  hereabouts  when  old  Indiana 
Asbury  was  born.  He  was  an  associate  of 
Simpson's  in  the  founding  of  Methodism  in 
Indiana,  and  served  the  University  for  years 
as  its  financial  secretary.  The  first  room  out- 
side the  West  Door  of  the  Hall  is  named  after 


him — DeMotte  Hall — and  in  it  hangs  a  pho- 
tograph of  him  taken  shortly  before  his  death 
in  1875. 

To  this  College  there  came  in  1844  Abisha 
L.  Morrison,  and  after  two  years  in  the  col- 
lege, the  Mexican  War  breaking  out,  he  organ- 
ized a  company  of  students,  was  elected  its 
captain,  and  marched  from  here  south  through 
the  State  to  the  Ohio  River,  where,  at  Evans- 
ville,  he  and  his  company  took  boats  for  New 
Orleans,  and  from  thence  sailed  across  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  to  Vera  Cruz.  Having  taken  part 
in  the  campaign  that  captured  Mexico  City 
and  ended  the  war,  he  returned  here  to  Green- 
castle,  not  to  re-enter  college,  but  to  marry 
Amanda,  the  daughter  of  old  Daniel  DeMotte, 
whom  he  had  met  and  loved  when  a  student  in 
the  University  before  he  went  to  the  war.  His 
life,  except  for  a  brief  period  in  the  Civil  War 
as  colonel  of  an  Indiana  regiment,  was  spent 
here  in  Greencastle,  and  he  sleeps  out  on  the 
slopes  of  Forest  Hill,  where  also  rests  Daniel 
DeMotte  and  several  of  his  children. 

One  of  the  earliest  subscribers  to  the  funds 
that  made  Indiana  Asbury  possible  was  my 
grandfather  Walker,  who  was  the  owner  of  sev- 
eral scholarships  that  were  supposed  to  entitle 


the  holder  to  nominate  in  perpetuity  some  per- 
son who  could,  through  such  nomination,  attend 
the  college  without  the  payment  of  tuition  or 
matriculation  fees.  I  have  often  wondered 
how  those  old  scholarships  came  to  lapse,  and 
whatever  became  of  them. 

Here,  to  Greencastle,  my  father  came  during 
the  years  of  the  Civil  War,  being  himself  a  boy 
too  young  and  too  frail  for  service,  which  had, 
however,  taken  his  older  brother  out  of  the  col- 
lege into  the  army.  Here  he  met  and  married 
the  daughter  of  Colonel  Morrison  and  Amanda 
DeMotte.  My  mother,  by  the  way,  was  one 
of  the  first  students  in  the  old  seminary  that 
stood  on  the  present  site  of  College  Avenue 
Church,  which  gave  its  name  to  Seminary 
Street.  That  was  before  co-education,  but  was 
largely  instrumental  in  bringing  it  about. 

To  old  Indiana  Asbury,  in  those  days  and 
since,  came  my  uncles  and  aunts,  and  other  rela- 
tives by  the  score,  the  DeMottes,  the  Morrisons 
and  the  Walkers.  Their  names  are  written  all 
through  the  old  catalogues  and  their  records  in 
the  history  of  Greencastle  and  the  world. 

It  was,  therefore,  perfectly  natural,  with 
such  an  heredity,  that  I  should  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible have  come  here  to  follow  in  the  footsteps 

5 


of  my  ancestors.  I  entered  Junior  Prep,  and 
except  for  a  year  off,  when  father  returned 
from  his  missionary  work  in  China  for  a  vaca- 
tion, plodded  regularly  through  until  my  name 
was  added  to  the  growing  roll  of  alumni. 

With  such  a  family  record  behind  me,  it 
was  no  more  than  living  up  to  the  family  tradi- 
tion that  I  should  have  found  here,  in  the  per- 
son of  a  classmate,  she  who  has  been  by  my  side 
ever  since,  encouraging  me  to  success  by  her 
faith  in  me  and  by  her  understanding  of  the 
background  against  which  my  life  has  been  set. 
And  here  we  have  sent  our  two  sons ;  here  they 
have  both  graduated;  but,  whether  Fate  in 
their  case  shall  keep  up  the  family  tradition 
and  record,  remains  in  the  lap  of  Fate,  though 
I  may  at  least  be  permitted  to  say  that  I  have 
hopes! 

A  number  of  our  friends  have  expressed 
more  or  less  surprise  that,  living  as  we  have 
for  so  many  years  in  New  York,  with  so  many 
great  institutions  of  learning  to  which  you  in 
this  part  of  the  country  send  your  sons,  if  pos- 
sible, that  I,  living  there  among  them,  should 
have  sent  my  boys  back  to  this  Methodist  Col- 
lege in  Indiana.  But  if  you  knew  these  great 
educational  institutions  of  the  East  intimately 


and  as  well  as  I  do,  you  would  not  be  surprised. 

It  was  a  bitter  disappointment  to  my  sons 
when  graduating  from  the  Horace  Mann  High 
School  in  New  York,  and  when  they  were  being 
eagerly  bid,  on  account  of  their  athletic 
prowess,  to  attend  Yale,  and  Princeton,  and 
Cornell,  and  Columbia,  to  which  most  of  their 
associates  were  going  for  their  college  educa- 
tions, to  have  to  reply  to  all  inquiries  that  they 
were  going  West  to  attend  DePauw  Univer- 
sity, a  college  of  which  none  of  their  associates 
had  ever  heard.  But  I  asked  the  boys  to  be- 
lieve that  I  would  not  ask  them  to  separate 
themselves  from  the  associates  of  their  high 
school  days,  and  come  a  thousand  miles  from 
home  out  here  for  their  college  education,  if  I 
were  not  absolutely  certain  that  it  was  the  best 
thing  for  them.  They  have  both  finished  their 
courses  here  now,  and  they  are  both  ready  to 
add  their  word  to  mine  that  it  was  the  best 
thing  that  ever  happened  to  them. 

I  remember  how  my  older  son,  Merle,  re- 
turned home  for  Christmas  after  his  first  three 
months  here,  had  scarcely  gotten  into  the  house 
when  he  sought  me  out  and  said:  "Dad,  I 
know  now  why  you  insisted  on  my  going  out 
to  DePauw.  The  boys  out  there  all  have  so 

7 


much  brighter  eyes  than  the  boys  here.  They 
all  know  what  they  are  going  to  college  for; 
but  my  Horace  Mann  friends  were  none  of 
them  going  to  college  for  any  reason  except 
that  their  fathers  were  sending  them."  He 
was  particularly  impressed  by  the  fact  that  one 
of  the  men  in  his  class  was  so  eager  for  an 
education  that  he  worked  several  hours  of  every 
day  unloading  coal  from  a  freight  car  down 
at  Harris'  Mill  to  make  the  money  to  pay  his 
way  here  at  college.  He  also  noticed  of  his 
own  accord  the  extraordinary  difference  in 
scholastic  standards. 

You  may  be  surprised  to  know  that  these 
great  educational  institutions  of  the  East,  of 
which  you  in  the  West  think  so  much,  only 
require  for  passing  a  grade  of  fifty.  In 
Princeton  they  have  an  even  more  extraordi- 
nary system  than  that,  where  the  passing  grade 
is  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  mark  made  by  the  best 
man  in  the  class,  who  rarely  averages  much 
over  eighty,  so  that  scholarship  or  attention  to 
studies  is  one  of  the  least  things  necessary  for 
a  young  man  to  get  through  one  of  the  large 
Eastern  universities.  Horace  Mann  is  so  near 
Columbia  University  that  the  boys  had  plenty 
of  opportunity  to  see  what  the  Columbia  spirit 


was.  A  spirit,  described  to  me  by  a  prominent 
alumnus  of  Columbia  as  a  spirit  of  "Oh,  what's 
the  use!"  While  the  old  president  of  Harvard 
accurately  described  that  university's  attitude 
toward  scholarship  by  saying  that  students 
were  graded  ABC  and  D — that  D  was  failure 
and  the  gentleman's  grade  was  C. 

My  many  years  of  business  in  New  York 
have  brought  me  into  close  and  intimate  con- 
tact with  hundreds  of  men  who  got  what  edu- 
cation they  have  from  these  so-called  great 
Eastern  universities,  and  I  shocked  one  of  them 
very  much  by  telling  him  one  day,  when  he 
complained  that  I  had  shown  him  and  his 
proposition  scant  consideration,  that  I  had 
taken  the  pains  to  inform  myself  that  he  was 
educated  at  Harvard,  and  that,  having  learned 
that  fact,  I  gave  no  further  thought  either  to 
him  or  to  what  he  had  to  propose.  I  could 
have  made  a  similar  reply  to  almost  every  man 
I  have  met  who  claims  allegiance  to  one  of  the 
so-called  great  Eastern  universities,  but  when- 
ever I  run  across  a  graduate  of  some  small  col- 
lege in  Ohio,  Indiana  or  Illinois  I  always  look 
out! 

It  was  because  I  wanted  my  sons  to  escape 
the  dillettantism  of  the  Eastern  school;  be- 


cause  I  wanted  them  to  get  their  education  in 
a  country  where  things  are  still  worth  while, 
and  where  there  are  still  young  men  who  know 
that  an  education  is  worth  working  for,  that 
I  sent  them  out  here.  I  wanted  them  to  grad- 
uate from  a  college  where  scholastic  standards 
were  still  high  and  where  you  might  reasonably 
expect  that  a  man  would  know  something  about 
the  subjects  that  he  had  studied,  and  would 
have  some  capacity  to  think  before  he  would 
be  graduated. 

But  there  was  another  and  a  greater  reason 
for  sending  my  sons  from  New  York  to  the 
Middle  West.  Although  born  in  Indiana, 
they  have  both  of  them  grown  up  in  New  York 
City,  and  had  more  or  less  unconsciously  ab- 
sorbed the  atmosphere  of  internationalism, 
which  tends  so  much  to  rob  a  man  of  individ- 
uality; and  as  it  seemed  probable  that  most  of 
their  business  lives  would  be  spent  in  New 
York,  I  wanted  them  during  the  impression- 
able years,  while  they  were  getting  their  col- 
lege educations,  to  come  out  here,  live  with  the 
boys  that  come  from  American  farms,  from 
communities  and  towns  that  are  still  American 
in  population  and  spirit,  and  that  know  some- 
thing of  American  institutions,  feeling  that  if 

10 


they  came  out  here  and  lived  in  Indiana  for  the 
four  years  of  their  college  life,  they  would 
imbibe  a  spirit  of  Americanism  that  would 
make  them  immune  to  the  international  influ- 
ences created  by  our  enormous  foreign  popula- 
tion in  the  East.  That  out  here  they  would 
come  to  know  and  see  the  reason  why  our  coun- 
try is  what  it  is,  and  that,  returning  to  New 
York,  they  would  continually  challenge  the 
influences  that  are  menacing,  not  only  our 
American  ideals,  but  the  very  existence  of  our 
country.  That  out  here  they  would  meet  and 
come  to  know  the  young  men  wrho  are  to  save 
America,  if  it  is  to  be  saved.  For  if  you  lived 
where  I  have  lived  for  the  last  twenty  years 
you  would  realize  that  the  Mississippi  Valley 
is  the  abiding  place  of  true  Americanism,  and 
that  unless  the  great  centers  of  population  in 
the  East  are  rescued  and  Americanized  soon, 
you  here  will  be  compelled  to  recognize  them 
as  truly  the  enemies'  country. 

But  there  was  and  is  a  finer  and  better 
reason,  supreme  above  all  others,  a  reason  which 
most  men  would  hesitate  to  give,  even  if  they 
recognized  it ;  but  in  my  case  I  have  recognized 
it  and  declared  myself  on  the  subject  years  be- 
fore this  great  war  broke  out,  and  I  can  hardly 

11 


state  the  reason  better  than  by  giving  you  a 
brief  account  of  how  I  came  to  declare  myself 
on  this  matter. 

I  have  for  a  number  of  years  been  invited  to 
address  the  students  of  first  one  and  then  an- 
other of  our  Eastern  colleges  and  universities, 
and  by  my  visits  to  the  different  schools  and 
my  association  with  members  of  the  faculty 
and  the  students  themselves  I  have  become  im- 
pressed with  the  remarkable  degree  to  which 
Germanic  ideals  of  education  had  invaded  the 
colleges  and  universities  of  the  East,  and  the 
number  of  men  in  their  faculties  who  had  se- 
cured more  or  less  of  their  education  in  German 
universities,  and  who  had  on  that  account 
assumed  toward  their  American  associates  an 
attitude  of  arrogance  and  domination  typically 
Teutonic!  A  number  of  professors  had  called 
my  attention  to  this  fact  and  had  told  me  in- 
stance after  instance  of  the  conflicts  between 
German  ideals  and  American  ideals,  in  faculty 
meetings,  in  the  adoption  of  lecture  systems, 
in  the  outlining  of  courses,  and  in  matters  of 
college  discipline.  I  particularly  remember  an 
occasion  in  March,  1906,  when  I  lectured  at 
Cornell  University,  at  Ithaca,  New  York,  and 
of  what  was  told  me  on  this  subject  by  Dr. 

12 


Frank  Fetter,  a  graduate  of  Indiana  Univer- 
city,  whom  you  will  remember  as  the  man  whom 
I  selected  to  deliver  the  first  course  of  Horizon 
Lectures  here. 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that  in  1907  I  took 
my  two  sons  on  a  trip  through  Europe,  which 
was  taken  particularly  for  their  educational 
benefit,  as  they  had  reached  that  point  in  their 
high  school  work  where  they  were  beginning  to 
study  Latin  and  Greek. 

Landing  in  London,  I  hurried  with  them  to 
Italy  to  begin  their  education  there.  We  trav- 
elled through  Italy,  spent  much  time  in  Rome 
and  Naples,  studying  the  antiquities  and  visit- 
ing two  or  three  Italian  universities.  We  went 
across  to  Greece  and  looked  into  the  University 
of  Athens.  Then  to  Asia  Minor  and  Constan- 
tinople, and  came  back  through  Bulgaria  and 
Servia,  stopping  some  time  in  Vienna,  where 
we  investigated  the  University  of  Vienna.  We 
went  to  Switzerland,  to  Zurich,  to  Geneva,  to 
Germany;  stopping  at  Heidelberg,  Frankfort, 
Leipsic,  Berlin,  and  other  places.  We  went 
through  Holland,  Belgium  and  France,  and 
looked  over  the  University  of  Paris.  We  went 
to  England,  and  spent  much  time  at  Cambridge 
and  Durham  and  Edinburgh,  and  then,  most 

13 


of  all,  at  Oxford.  Everywhere  we  went  I 
called  the  attention  of  the  boys  to  the  peculiar 
differences  in  the  ideals  of  the  various  races 
and  nations,  and  how  it  affected  their  attitude 
toward  education.  I  called  their  attention  to 
the  ways  that  the  different  nations  had  of  doing 
things;  to  their  different  standards  of  living; 
to  the  wage  scales  that  prevailed,  and  the  dif- 
ference between  the  wage  scales  that  prevailed 
even  among  countries  so  close  together  as  those 
of  Europe;  and  everywhere  contrasted  them 
with  the  wage  scales  and  the  standards  of  living 
in  America,  and  explained  to  them  the  eco- 
nomic significance  of  these  things.  I  called 
their  attention  particularly  to  the  physical 
geography  of  Europe  as  we  travelled  through 
the  country,  and  showed  them  how  natural 
boundaries  of  rivers  and  mountain  ranges  had 
prevailed  to  keep  alive  the  separate  national 
habits,  national  languages,  national  styles  of 
dress  and  standards  of  living,  and  national 
ideals  within  such  narrow  limits. 

Returning  to  America  in  the  Fall,  one  of  the 
first  functions  that  I  attended  was  a  dinner  of 
college  men,  and  while  waiting  for  the  doors 
of  the  banquet  room  to  open,  I  engaged  in  a 
conversation  with  one  of  my  friends,  describ- 

14 


ing  to  him  my  trip  of  the  Summer,  and  par- 
ticularly my  visits  to  the  different  universities 
in  Europe  and  Britain,  and  summarized  the 
educational  ideals  of  the  different  countries 
substantially  as  follows: 

In  England,  I  said,  education  is  the  neces- 
sary livery  of  the  gentleman,  and  so  he  seeks  it 
and  wears  it  like  a  gentleman. 

In  France,  men  go  to  medical  schools  and 
law  schools  and  other  special  schools  whose  pur- 
pose is  to  fit  them  for  some  one  or  other  of  the 
so-called  learned  professions;  but  that  no 
Frenchman  ever  seemed  to  think  that  a  college 
education,  with  its  groundwork  of  fundamen- 
tals, was  ever  necessary,  or  even  desirable;  that 
education  in  France  was,  therefore,  purely  pro- 
fessional. 

In  Italy,  education  remained  as  it  had 
always  been — monastic,  the  trimming  of  the 
professional  churchman,  and  that  unless  one  in- 
tended to  be  a  priest  or  belonged  to  the  nobility, 
and  expected  to  enter  the  service  of  the  state, 
it  was  impossible  to  understand  why  one  should 
desire  an  education. 

In  Austria,  education  was  regarded  as  one  of 
the  things  necessary  to  the  aristocrat,  to  sepa- 
rate him  still  farther  from  the  people  whom  he 

15 


held  in  subjection  and  service. 

But  in  Germany  education  was  sought 
purely  as  a  means  of  raising  one's  status  or  in- 
creasing one's  earning  power;  that  the  only 
reason  that  a  German  went  to  a  university  was 
the  possibility  of  raising  himself  above  a  num- 
ber of  his  fellow  countrymen,  upon  whom  he 
could  thereafter  look  down,  or  of  adding  a 
mark  a  day  to  his  earning  power. 

Standing  near  and  listening  to  our  conver- 
sation was  a  man  who  at  one  time  had  been 
president  of  a  college,  and  at  this  point  he 
leaned  over  and  interrupted  me,  saying:  "At 
least  you  will  have  to  admit  that  we  have  to 
go  to  Germany  for  our  culture."  "Culture,'5 
I  said.  "If  there  is  one  country  in  the  world 
where  the  meaning  of  the  word  is  not  known, 
it  is  Germany." 

At  that  moment  the  doors  of  the  banquet  hall 
opened  and  we  all  filed  in  to  eat,  but  the  man 
to  whom  I  had  been  talking  happened  to  be  the 
toastmaster  of  the  occasion,  and  after  the  food 
had  been  safely  put  away  he  told  the  assembly 
of  what  I  had  said  to  him  on  the  subject  of 
education  in  Europe  and  of  the  interruption  of 
the  ex-college  president,  and  said  that  it  seemed 
to  him  that  a  most  profitable  time  would  be  had 

16 


by  all  if  the  ex-college  president  and  myself 
were  invited  to  continue  the  debate  that  had 
been  interrupted  by  the  opening  of  the  doors. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  go  over  the  points  of 
that  debate  in  full,  but  will  give  you  briefly 
my  summary,  which  was  that  German  educa- 
tion was  essentially  utilitarian  and  selfish ;  that 
it  had  no  other  purpose  than  to  make  the  one 
educated  a  more  valuable  servant  of  or  a  more 
efficient  worker  for  the  state,  and  that,  in  order 
to  accomplish  this  result,  the  methods  were  pur- 
posely dehumanizing.  That  nowhere  else  in 
the  world  but  Germany  did  men  talk  of  free- 
dom, and  yet  never  dream  of  raising  a  finger  to 
secure  liberty  for  themselves.  That  nowhere 
else  but  in  Germany  were  religious  and  moral 
ideals  analyzed  and  defined,  and  religious  and 
moral  truths  stated  with  exactness  by  men  who 
had  not  the  slightest  conviction  that  any  of 
these  religious  or  moral  truths  should  influence 
or  govern  their  own  conduct.  That  nowhere 
else  but  in  Germany  did  students  of  politics 
and  economics  determine  facts  and  write  tomes 
of  figures  and  statistics  that  proved  certain 
political  and  economic  principles  to  be  true, 
and  yet  in  their  own  country  repudiate  in  toto 
the  conclusions  imperatively  drawn  from  the 

17 


facts  and  statistics  that  they  had  accumulated. 
That  nowhere  else  but  in  Germany  did  men 
talk  of  political  liberty  and  resign  themselves 
to  military  slavery,  or  profess  high  ideals  and 
live  the  life  of  beasts,  or  profess  religion  and 
high  ethical  principles  while  wallowing  in  dis- 
sipation, vice  and  depravity!  That  the  Ger- 
man was  the  only  man  whom  I  had  known  who 
could  see  no  reason  why  the  acceptance  of  a 
principle  should  imply  any  obligation  on  his 
part  to  observe  it,  or  who  would  lay  down  moral 
doctrines  without  the  slightest  feeling  that  he 
should  respect  them. 

We  have  been  told  by  one  high  in  authority 
that  in  these  times  we  should  be  neutral  in 
thought  as  well  as  speech,  but  I  have  never  been 
neutral  either  in  speech  or  in  thought,  and  I 
know  that  many  of  you  who  have  for  months 
been  restraining  yourselves  will  thank  me  now 
for  my  frank  utterances.  Why  should  we  re- 
frain from  telling  that  which  we  know  to  be 
true?  Is  any  good  to  come  to  us  or  to  our 
country  by  pretending  to  ourselves  as  well  as 
to  the  world  that  we  do  not  recognize  the  hide- 
ousness  of  this  thing  that  has  challenged  the 
world?  My  acquaintance  with  this  Germanic 
thing  began  when  I  was  a  boy  in  China.  The 

18 


cellar  of  our  home  in  the  Mission  Compound 
at  Tientsin  was  a  station  in  the  underground 
railway  that  enabled  deserting  German  sailors 
to  escape  from  the  brutality  of  their  officers  in 
inculcating  that  kind  of  culture  for  which  my 
college  friend  claimed  we  had  to  go  to  Ger- 
many. 

Culture,  I  said,  was  absolutely  unknown  in 
Germany.  It  was  not  even  known  in  our 
great  American  universities  that  had  come 
under  the  German  influence  and  the  Germanic 
ideals  of  education!  That  only  in  America, 
and  only  in  the  small  colleges  of  America  was 
the  true  meaning  of  culture  really  understood. 
That  only  in  the  small  colleges  of  America  did 
men  and  women  seek  education  for  the  purpose 
of  using  their  equipment  in  the  service  of  hu- 
manity; that  only  in  America  was  the  obliga- 
tion of  educated  men  and  women  to  their  fel- 
lows acknowledged.  That  if  "culture"  meant, 
as  I  believed  it  did,  the  education  of  mind  to 
enable  it  to  recognize  truth,  and  to  follow  it, 
the  cultivation  of  soul  that  one  might  be  re- 
sponsive to  the  needs  of  his  fellow-man,  the 
kindliness  of  heart  that  goes  with  the  realiza- 
tion that  educated  minds  and  cultivated  souls 
should  be  used  for  the  assistance  of  those  not 

19 


so  fortunate  in  educational  opportunities  and 
in  psychological  development;  that  it  was  only 
in  America  that  culture  was  truly  understood. 
That  it  was  only  in  the  small  colleges  of 
America  where  education  has  that  humanity 
that  makes  it  responsive  to  the  needs  of  the 
mass  of  the  uneducated. 

Culture  is  not  skill  in  execution  or  grace  and 
ease  in  performance,  but  that  knowledge  of 
human  accomplishment  and  human  relationship 
which  produces  gentleness  of  spirit  and  consid- 
eration for  others,  whatever  their  station  or  con- 
dition. It  is  only  in  America  that  educated 
men  and  women  feel  and  recognize  the  duty 
of  placing  their  education  and  their  ability  at 
the  disposal  of  and  in  the  service  of  their  fel- 
low-men ;  that  they  acknowledge  the  obligation 
of  leadership. 

Such  an  attitude  on  the  part  of  an  educated 
man  in  Europe,  either  toward  education  or  his 
abilities  gained  through  education,  would  be 
impossible  to  conceive. 

It  was  because  I  knew  how  much  the  edu- 
cational institutions  of  the  East  have  adopted 
and  made  their  own  the  Germanic  attitude 
toward  education,  and  the  use  to  be  made 
thereof  by  the  man  who  gains  it,  that  I  sent 

20 


my  boys  out  here  to  DePauw. 

It  was  because  I  wanted  them  to  escape  the 
English  attitude  toward  education — that  of  a 
gentleman  acquiring  it  for  his  own  personal 
luxury — that  I  sent  them  out  here  to  mingle 
with  the  sons  of  the  Middle  West. 

Because  I  knew  that,  while  French  education 
might  make  a  good  doctor,  or  a  good  lawyer, 
or  a  good  priest,  it  rarely  if  every  produced  a 
well-rounded  man. 

It  was,  if  you  please,  because  I  wanted  them 
to  be  Americans,  to  want  to  get  the  best  edu- 
cation possible,  and  then  to  recognize  their 
obligation  and  their  duty  to  use  their  abilities 
and  their  education  for  the  benefit  of  their 
country  and  for  their  fellow-men. 

I  wanted  them  to  absorb  here  a  thing  which 
it  is  impossible  for  one  to  get  in  the  Eastern 
university — that  is,  the  American  attitude 
toward  work.  To  mingle  with  and  know  the 
character  of  boys  who  worked,  to  appreciate 
the  dignity  and  responsibility  of  labor,  and  to 
learn  to  be  ashamed  of  doing  nothing  and  of 
failing  to  make  good. 

It  has  been  with  astonishment  and  regret 
that  I  have  seen  DePauw  men  and  women  of 
my  time  passing  over  the  merits  of  DePauw 

21 


in  their  ignorance,  and  sending  their  children 
down  East,  pretending  to  themselves  that  they 
were  giving  their  children  advantages  that 
they  had  not  had  themselves,  but  really  ruining 
the  lives  and  futures  of  their  children  by  send- 
ing them  East  to  become  snobs,  if  nothing 
worse,  or  to  acquire  such  an  attitude  toward 
doing  anything  in  the  world  that  it  is  doubtful 
if  they  will  ever  be  able  to  make  a  real  effort 
in  the  future,  even  if  they  should  feel  moved 
so  to  do. 

These  are  times  that  require  the  habit  of 
searching  for  the  truth,  and  that  require  un- 
usual skill  in  detecting  sophistry  and  recog- 
nizing what  facts  really  prove ;  and,  above  all, 
these  are  times  that  require  mental  integrity 
and  moral  courage. 

Those  of  us  who  got  our  education  here  at 
DePauw  are  fortunate.  Many  of  you  are 
more  fortunate  than  you  know.  Those  of  you 
who  are  still  students  here  are  fortunate,  for 
here  more  than  any  other  college  that  I  know, 
and  I  have  looked  into  many,  will  you  get  that 
kind  of  an  education  that  will  best  stand  you 
in  stead  in  the  trying  days  of  the  future. 

And  to  you  older  DePauw  men  and  women, 
who  are  thinking  of  sending  your  children 

22 


down  East,  in  the  hope  that  they  will  there  gain 
a  culture  or  finish  that  may  raise  their  social 
status  in  your  home  towns  or  cities,  I  warn  you 
that  when  your  sons  and  daughters  come  back 
from  the  East,  the  young  people  of  your  home 
towns  may  ape  their  habits,  copy  their  clothes 
and  dress,  and  imitate  their  slang  vocabulary, 
but  it  is  most  unlikely  that  they  will  contribute 
any  industrial,  political  or  moral  impulse  for 
the  economic  development  or  social  benefit  of 
their  community. 

It  will  be  better  for  you  to  reconsider  your 
decision  before  it  is  too  late,  and  send  them 
here,  where  stress  is  laid  not  upon  the  amount 
of  money  that  they  can  spend  while  in  college, 
but  upon  the  character  which  they  are  able  to 
develop  and  impress  upon  their  fellow  stu- 
dents. Their  prospect  of  leading  lives  satis- 
factory to  themselves  and  to  you,  and  of  benefit 
to  their  fellow-men  and  to  their  country,  will 
be  far  greater  if  you  give  them  their  education 
out  here  in  one  of  these  small  Western  colleges, 
where  straight  thinking  is  still  taught,  where 
American  ideals  still  prevail,  and  where  true 
culture  is  in  the  air,  than  you  will  ever  do  by 
sending  them  during  their  formative  years  to 
one  of  those  Germanized,  internationalized,  big 
universities  down  East. 

23 


Not    Too    Proud 
To  Fight 


BY 

GUY  MORRISON  WALKER 


Not  Too  Proud  To  Fight 

An  Address  delivered  by  GUY  MORRISON  WALKER 
at  the  Indiana  State  Banquet  of  Phi  Kappa  Psi, 
Thanksgiving  Eve.,  Nov.  29,  1916. 

GOVERNOR  GOODRICH:  " I  am  go- 
ing to  call  on  one  who  has  come  a  thou- 
sand miles  to  be  with  us  on  this  occasion.  He 
left  Indiana  nearly  twenty  years  ago  and  has 
made  a  success  in  a  faraway  state.  He  has  not 
been  with  us  for  several  years  and  it  is  seldom 
that  anyone  comes  so  far  to  be  with  us.  I  am 
sure  you  will  all  be  glad  to  hear  from  GUY 
WALKER." 

Mr.  Walker:  "It  is  true  that  a  thousand 
miles  is  a  long  way  to  come  to  spend  a  few 
hours  with  old  friends,  and  it  is  also  true  that  I 
have  not  attended  one  of  these  annual  ban- 
quets for  a  number  of  years,  and  since  Jim 
Goodrich  told  me  five  minutes  ago  that  he  was 
going  to  call  on  me  for  some  remarks,  it  oc- 


curred  to  me  that  it  was  not  likely  that  I  should 
again  come  a  thousand  miles  to  be  with  you  on 
a  similar  occasion,  and  if,  as  it  seems  possible, 
this  may  be  the  last  time  I  shall  ever  have  an 
opportunity  of  speaking  to  you,  why  should  I 
waste  the  opportunity  in  common-place  compli- 
ments or  attempts  to  amuse  you  when  I  have  no 
skill  as  an  entertainer?  Far  better  that  I 
should  speak  to  you  as  man  to  man  and  try  to 
tell  you  something  that  each  one  of  you  will 
remember  to  your  dying  day. 

I  did  not  expect  to  speak  to  you  and  did  not 
ask  for  the  opportunity,  but  since  Governor 
Goodrich  has  called  upon  me  I  have  determined 
to  tell  you  a  few  things  that  lie  heavily  on  my 
mind. 

The  Chinese  have  a  beautiful  symbol  that 
expresses  my  position.  Their  ideograph  for 
the  human  heart  is  the  beautiful  Lotus  Bud 
which  so  much  resembles  it  in  shape  and  color. 
Having  drawn  the  Lotus  Bud  as  a  symbol  of 
the  human  heart,  they  draw  a  heavy  bar  across 
it,  which  means  that  one  has  something  in  his 

4 


heart.  This  is  translated  as  MUST  or 
NECESSITY;  that  is,  that  inward  compul- 
sion or  necessity  which  forces  one  to  speak  or 
to  act.  It  is  that  compulsion  that  moves  me 
now.  I  feel  that  I  must  on  this  occasion,  prob- 
ably the  last  at  which  I  shall  ever  speak  to  you, 
speak  to  you  of  those  things  that  seem  to  me 
to  be  trueA  and  which  I  have  feared  were  being 
lost  sight  of  by  our  people,  and  particularly  by 
our  college  men  who  ought  to  have  been  more 
careful  to  hold  fast  to  those  judgments,  sup- 
ported by  sound  morals  and  just  economics  and 
arrived  at  by  straight  thinking. 

I  do  not  ask  you  to  accept  what  I  say,  but  I 
ask  you  to  hear  me  in  spite  of  your  prejudices 
and  your  predispositions,  and  remember  that  I 
have  not  had  the  time  to  consider  my  words  or 
to  choose  those  which  might  least  offend  your 
sensibilities  or  more  exactly  state  my  own 
meaning. 

We  have  recently  had  an  election,  which  here 
in  Indiana  has  resulted  in  the  election  of  two 
of  my  old  college  mates  to  the  most  prominent 

5 


positions  in  the  gift  of  the  people  of  the  State, 
and  I  came  here  from  a  thousand  miles  away 
in  order  to  be  with  you  tonight  to  do  honor  to 
Jim  Goodrich,  just  elected  Governor  of  the 
State,  and  Jim  Watson,  whom  you  have 
elected  to  the  United  States  Senate. 

Now  these  two  men  have  reached  their  pres- 
ent positions  through  some  more  or  less  extraor- 
dinary vicissitudes  that  have  not  been  experi- 
enced by  others.  I  remember  very  well  the 
growing  inflammation  of  Jim  Goodrich' s  eyes 
while  he  was  in  college,  and  I  remember  well 
his  disappointment  and  despair  when  he  was 
told  that  in  order  to  save  his  sight  it  would  be 
absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  discontinue  his 
effort  to  secure  a  college  education.  Jim  Good- 
rich was  compelled  to  quit  college  in  his  sopho- 
more year  on  account  of  ill-health  and  an  in- 
flammation in  his  eyes  that  threatened  his  sight. 
Many  another  man  would  have  returned  to  the 
farm  and  given  up  his  effort  at  an  education, 
but  not  so  with  Jim  Goodrich !  He  was  not  too 
proud  to  fight  against  physical  weakness,  sick- 


ness  and  discouragement,  and  although  he 
never  returned  to  complete  his  college  educa- 
tion he  continued  his  studies,  attaining  the  cul- 
ture of  the  educated  man,  the  success  in  busi- 
ness and  banking  that  induced  his  fellow  citi- 
zens to  entrust  the  political  future  of  the  State 
of  Indiana  to  his  care  and  he  is  now  the  Gov- 
ernor of  the  State,  not  because  he  was  too  proud 
to  fight,  but  because  he  was  too  proud  to  quit! 

I  was  with  Jim  Watson  on  the  night  when 
he  hurriedly  separated  himself  from  the  college 
community.  I  was  the  messenger  sent  to  ar- 
range his  last  tryst.  Too  many  young  college 
men  falling  foul  of  college  authorities  have 
felt  that  their  futures  were  so  blasted  and  be- 
clouded that  there  would  be  little  use  in  at- 
tempting to  recover  their  self -esteem,  much  less 
the  esteem  of  their  f  ellowmen.  If  J  im  Watson 
had  been  too  proud  to  fight,  his  career  would 
have  ended  with  that  college  escapade,  but  Jim 
was  made  of  other  stuff,  and  realizing  his  mis- 
take, he  made  frank  confession  and  asked  the 
people  to  give  him  a  chance  and  he  would  show 

7 


them  that  he  would  never  again  be  guilty  of 
another  such  folly,  and  he  never  has.  But  I 
am  sure  that  none  of  you  can  ever  know  how 
the  memory  of  it  has  haunted  him,  how  the 
recollection  of  it  has  humiliated  him,  or  the 
courage  and  dogged  perseverance  that  it  has 
taken  for  him  to  outlive  the  jeers  and  sneers  of 
those  who  are  always  ready  to  taunt  a  man  with 
his  youthful  errors  and  who  refuse  to  believe 
that  years  of  public  sendee  with  credit  and 
without  reproach  can  ever  wipe  out  the  record 
of  a  youthful  mis-step.  But  Jim  has  proved 
his  quality!  For  thirty  years  his  life  has  been 
an  open  book.  He  has  won  the  trust  and  con- 
fidence of  the  people  of  the  whole  State,  has 
been  honored  by  them  with  frequent  election, 
and  once  or  twice  been  defeated  lest  he  forget, 
until  now  he  has  been  elected  to  represent  them 
in  the  greatest  deliberative  body  on  earth — The 
Senate  of  the  United  States ! 

Jim  Watson  has  not  come  through  the  years 
of  his  life  to  his  present  position  of  honor  and 
eminence  because  he  was  too  proud  to  fight! 

8 


I  have  come  a  thousand  miles  to  be  with  you 
tonight  to  exalt  the  spirit  of  these  two  men, 
because  I  know  the  obstacles  and  difficulties 
over  which  they  have  reached  their  present  posi- 
tions. And  because  I  would  have  you  know 
that  it  is  this  spirit  of  struggle  to  do  something, 
perchance  doing  something  wrong,  but  if  doing 
it  WTong,  struggling  again  to  recover  from  the 
mistake,  and  to  do  it  right  next  time,  that  is 
the  spirit  of  all  accomplishment.  I  have  been 
distressed  more  than  I  can  tell  you  by  a  spirit 
of  intellectual  dilettantism  among  the  younger 
college  men  of  this  day,  which  I  fear  bodes  ill 
for  the  future  of  this  Republic.  Unfortunately 
there  are  those  in  high  places  who  affect  this 
spirit  themselves  and  who  by  their  attitude  give 
countenance  and  color  of  virtue  to  this  intel- 
lectual debility  and  moral  lassitude  exhibited 
by  our  young  men ! 

My  attention  was  called  to  this  attitude 
among  the  younger  college  men  by  what  oc- 
curred at  a  recent  dinner  of  the  Allegheny  Col- 
lege graduates  in  New  York,  to  which  I  was 

9 


invited  as  a  guest.  One  of  the  younger  Alumni 
from  Allegheny  College,  speaking  at  the  ban- 
quet, with  a  sneer  declared  that:  "He  for  one 
was  disgusted  with  the  assumption  of  the  pos- 
session of  moral  ideals  by  the  older  alumni; 
that  he  knew  that  he  was  speaking  for  the  most 
of  the  younger  alumni,  when  he  said  that  they 
did  not  come  out  to  the  Alumni  Banquets  be- 
cause they  were  tired  of  being  preached  at  by 
the  older  alumni."  And,  turning  to  one  of  the 
older  Alumni,  who  in  speaking  had  expressed 
regret  that  the  United  States  had  not  inter- 
vened in  Mexico,  he  said:  "You  are  too  old  to 
go  to  war  and  so  your  attitude  toward  Mexico 
and  to  the  war  in  Europe  is  a  safe  one  for  you, 
but  we  younger  men  refuse  to  recognize  any 
responsibility  except  for  ourselves.  Why 
should  we  risk  our  lives,  he  said,  to  save  the 
property  of  Americans  who  went  voluntarily 
into  Mexico  to  plunder  the  poor  Mexicans,  and 
you  doubtless  think  that  the  United  States 
ought  to  intervene  in  the  war  in  Europe  and 
that  we  younger  men  should  be  sent  over  there 
to  save  the  French  and  Belgians,  but  we  young 

10 


men  DO  NOT.  We  deny  that  there  is  any 
responsibility  on  us  for  conditions  in  Europe." 
Then  he  astonished  us  all  by  saying,  "I  will 
venture  to  say  that  I  am  the  only  one  here  who 
supported  President  Wilson  and  voted  for  him 
in  the  last  election." 

The  young  man  who  made  these  remarks,  a 
graduate  of  Allegheny  College  of  1912,  holds 
a  responsible  position  in  the  Police  Department 
in  the  City  of  New  York.  I  confess  that  I  was 
surprised.  I  was  shocked  not  only  by  the  moral 
blindness  of  the  young  man  himself  but  by  the 
fact  that  he  claimed  to  speak  for  the  young  col- 
lege men  of  his  generation  in  repudiating  any 
interest  in  or  moral  responsibility  for  the  con- 
ditions that  exist  in  the  world  today,  and  his 
claim  that  he  was  morally  justified  in  being  in- 
terested only  in  his  own  material  welfare. 

This  is  an  astonishing  doctrine  to  some  of  us 
who  learned  our  moral  philosophy  thirty  or 
forty  years  ago,  and  when  I  was  called  upon  as 
a  guest  to  speak,  I  told  them  of  Burton  Wilson, 
a  member  of  our  own  organization,  a  graduate 

11 


of  Nebraska  University  of  1897,  of  Columbia 
Law  School  in  1900;  of  how  I  had  assisted  him 
soon  after  his  getting  out  of  the  Law  School  to 
get  a  position  that  led  to  his  being  sent  to  Mex- 
ico City  to  represent  important  American 
manufacturing  interests  that  were  furnishing 
the  electrical  equipment  and  material  for  the 
reconstruction  of  the  City  Railways  of  Mexico 
City.  How  Burt  had  attended  to  the  business 
so  well  that  he  had  in  ten  years  become  the  lead- 
ing American  lawyer  in  Mexico,  a  director  of 
and  the  attorney  for  the  American  Bank  in 
Mexico  City,  the  President  of  the  American 
University  Club,  and  when  the  revolution  broke 
out,  the  Chairman  of  the  International  Protec- 
tive Committee  that  had  been  organized  to  pro- 
tect the  interests  of  all  foreigners  in  Mexico.  I 
told  of  how  Burt  had  travelled  from  Mexico 
City  to  Washington  immediately  after  the  in- 
auguration of  President  Wilson  to  lay  the 
situation  before  him;  of  the  assurances  that  he 
had  received  from  the  then  Secretary  of  State ; 
of  his  return  to  Mexico  and  of  his  again  going 
back  to  Washington  to  report  to  the  President 

12 


the  increasing  audacity  of  Mexican  attacks  on 
American  property  which  had  been  seized  and 
confiscated ;  and  how  the  Mexicans  finding  that 
no  punishment  had  followed  and  that  no  repar- 
ation had  been  exacted,  had  attacked  American 
men,  and  then  finding  that  neither  punitive  ex- 
pedition had  followed  nor  reparation  de- 
manded, had  not  only  murdered  American 
men  and  confiscated  their  property,  but  had 
outraged  and  murdered;  and  what  was  worse, 
outraged  and  left  alive,  American  women ;  and 
how  Burt  Wilson  had  taken  the  pains 
to  secure  in  Mexico  full  affidavits  covering 
the  proof  of  these  things  and  had  forwarded 
them  to  the  State  Department  that  they  might 
be  supplied  with  evidence  of  the  facts  on  which 
to  base  their  demands  for  the  protection  of 
American  lives.  And  how  coming  to  New 
York,  Burt  had  told  some  newspaper  friends 
to  call  at  the  State  Department  and  peruse 
the  affidavits  for  their  own  information,  but 
when  they  called  at  the  State  Department  for 
the  affidavits  they  were  told  that  no  such 
affidavits  were  on  file  in  the  State  Department 
and  that  the  State  Department  had  no  informa- 
tion of  the  alleged  outrages  and  murders!  I 

13 


told  them  how  Burt  Wilson  returned  to  Mex- 
ico City  and  was  seized  by  Carranza  and  kept 
incommunicado,  and  how  word  coming  to  some 
of  us  here,  we  had  telegraphed  and  stormed  the 
State  Department  until  we  secured  his  release." 

A  voice  interrupted:  "Mr.  Chairman,  I  ob- 
ject. The  Brother  is  making  a  political 
speech!" 

Mr.  Walker  continued:  "I  never  expected 
to  see  the  time  when  Phi  Psis  would  refuse  to 
listen  to  the  wrongs  of  a  Brother." 

Chairman:  "Proceed." 

"Burt  Wilson  was  taken  under  guard  from 
a  prison  in  Mexico  City,  put  on  the  train,  taken 
down  to  Vera  Cruz  and  there  put  on  board  the 
battleship  Nebraska  at  anchor  in  the  Harbor. 
From  there  he  was  transferred  to  the  first  trans- 
port sailing  to  New  Orleans,  and  coming  to 
New  York,  robbed  of  everything  he  had  in  the 
world,  his  office  seized,  I  took  him  into  my  of- 
fice because  he  had  nowhere  else  to  go. 

And  this  because  an  Administration  is  in 
power  at  Washington  that  refuses  to  take  any 

14 


responsibility  for  the  safety  of  the  property  or 
persons  of  American  citizens,  who  go  outside 
of  their  country,  and  in  its  refusal  to  accept 
moral  responsibility  for  the  protection  of  Amer- 
icans, it  is  supported  by  a  large  part  not  only 
of  our  whole  population  but  by  an  element  of 
our  educated  population.  Is  our  responsibility 
fulfilled  by  waiting  watchfully  while  American 
men  are  being  murdered  and  American  women 
ravished?" 

A  voice,  "The  Mexican  question  was  settled 
in  the  last  election." 

Walker  continued :  "When  you  have  grown 
a  little  older  you  will  realize  that  a  question  is 
never  settled  until  it  is  settled  right!  And 
that  when  you  attempt  to  excuse  inaction  and 
to  deny  moral  responsibility  under  the  pre- 
tense of  watchful  waiting,  you  are  simply  let- 
ting the  fire  spread,  which,  like  the  prairie  fire 
when  beyond  control,  will  burn  in  a  flame  so 
great  as  to  consume  the  waiters.  What  would 
have  happened  to  this  country  in  1861  if  when 
the  flag  was  fired  upon,  the  President  had  idled 

15 


away  the  months  in  watchful  waiting  while  the 
slave  states  prepared  for  war?  Where  would 
this  Republic  of  ours  be  now,  if  Lincoln  had 
been  TOO  PROUD  TO  FIGHT?  And  how 
many  millions  might  yet  have  been  slaves  if  he 
HAD  KEPT  US  OUT  OF  WAR?  When 
the  great  moral  issue  of  slavery  was  presented, 
the  men  of  Indiana  did  not  refuse  to  recog- 
nize their  responsibility,  and  they  certainly 
were  not  too  proud  to  fight.  The  men  of  the 
North  rallied  from  every  farm  and  village  north 
of  the  Ohio  River  to  save  the  Union  and  to 
stamp  out  slavery.  Not  in  response  to  a  call 
of  a  leader  who  claimed  that  by  watchful  wait- 
ing he  had  kept  them  out  of  war  and  that  he 
proposed  to  keep  on  doing  so,  but  in  response 
to  the  call  of  a  Lincoln  who  stated  the  moral 
issue  for  them  and  who  summoned  them  to  risk 
their  lives  for  the  Cause,  so  that  'Government 
of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people 
might  not  perish  from  the  earth.'  And  the  men 
of  these  States  to  the  number  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  replied,  'We're  coming  Father  Abra- 
ham.' Where  would  our  Union  be  today — our 

16 


forty-eight  States  of  which  we  are  so  proud— 
if  in  1861  the  men  of  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois 
had  been  TOO  PROUD  TO  FIGHT? 

On  the  fields  of  France  another  great  moral 
issue  is  being  tried.  Absolutism  has  challenged 
the  Reign  of  Reason.  Imperialism  refuses  to 
permit  its  whims  or  desires  to  be  judged  by  any 
ethical  standards.  Militarism  is  practicing  ter- 
rorism, and  slaughtering  millions  in  an  effort 
to  force  thinking  men  to  submit  to  the  yoke  of 
its  slavery.  But  in  Washington  a  Government 
that  claims  to  represent  our  nation,  founded 
on  the  principle  that  that  Government  is  best 
which  governs  least,  professes  to  see  no  issue 
and  denies  responsibility  for  the  outcome.  An 
Administration  which  professes  to  stand  for 
the  American  ideal  of  responsible  government 
and  of  the  Right  of  Reason  to  Rule,  calls  on 
our  people  to  be  neutral  in  thought  as  well  as 
in  deed.  Neutral?  How  can  we,  the  greatest 
exponent  of  Anti-Militarism,  stand  neutral  and 
refuse  to  see  the  blood  of  butchered  Belgium 
or  to  hear  the  cries  of  devastated  France,  while 

17 


the  greatest  exponent  of  militarism — of  the 
Germanic  doctrine  that  Might  Makes  Right- 
blots  out  from  the  map  of  Europe  its  greatest 
Republic  and  enslaves  the  most  liberal  and 
advanced  people  on  the  Continent? 

Can  we  ever  look  the  world  in  the  face  again 
if  we  deny  responsibility  for  permitting  the 
massacre  of  France — France  who  helped  us  win 
our  freedom?  Can  we  ever  again  ask  the  world 
to  accept  our  moral  leadership  if  we  refuse  to 
take  the  lead  in  demanding  redress  for  the 
wrongs  of  outraged  Belgium?  He  kept  us  out 
of  war!!!  How  can  we  stay  out  of  the  war? 
The  challenge  of  the  German  Empire  is  aimed 
directly  at  us! 

The  growth  of  American  ideals  in  Europe, 
the  growing  clamor  of  Continental  peoples  for 
a  share  in  Government,  and  the  rising  protest 
against  the  burden  of  militarism  had  reached 
a  point  that  compelled  Autocracy  to  challenge 
the  right  of  the  masses  to  repudiate  the  leader- 
ship of  those  who  claim  to  rule  by  divine  right, 
and  to  stem,  if  possible,  the  rising  tide  of  in- 

18 


tellectual  freedom  that  threatens  to  engulf  and 
destroy  all  remaining  Emperors  and  Kings  and 
Nobility  and  Military  Autocrats. 

The  challenge  is  aimed  directly  at  us  for  we 
are  the  chief  exponents  in  the  World,  of  the 
ideals  which  the  Germanic  Emperors  are  now 
attempting  to  destroy,  and  if  they  have  at- 
tacked France  first  and  Belgium,  and  England, 
who  in  her  democracy  is  freer  than  we  are  our- 
selves, it  is  because  German  military  autocracy 
and  junkerism  can  only  reach  us  across  the 
bodies  of  France  and  Britain. 

For  men  of  educated  minds  and  responsive 
hearts  and  sensitive  souls  to  refuse  to  recognize 
responsibility  in  this  the  greatest  moral  issue 
in  the  history  of  the  world  is  not  only  moral 
cowardice  but  intellectual  treason.  Men  do  not 
educate  their  minds,  cultivate  their  souls  and 
exercise  their  hearts  for  the  purpose  of  sulking 
in  inaction  or  to  hide  their  lack  of  courage  and 
want  of  initiative  behind  such  shibboleths  as 
"Too  Proud  to  Fight"  or  "He  Kept  Us  Out 
of  War." 

19 


A  voice:  "Mr.  Chairman,  the  speaker  is  out 
of  order." 

Another  voice :  "If  there  are  any  of  you  who 
are  not  too  proud  to  fight,  I  can  lick  the  whole 
bunch  of  you." 

Mr.  Walker  continuing:  "Since  I  have  been 
here,  some  have  been  trying  to  tell  me  that  the 
people  of  these  Middle  Western  States  are  en- 
tirely satisfied  with  the  attitude  of  the  Admin- 
istration at  Washington,  that  they  knew  no  one 
who  was  lost  on  the  Lusitania,  that  they  are 
unable  to  see  that  any  moral  issue  is  involved 
in  the  struggle  that  is  now  going  on  in  Europe, 
that  they  have  grown  rich  and  prosperous  in 
supplying  the  needs  of  the  struggling  Allies, 
who  have  been  fighting  our  battle  for  us.  That 
the  farmers  ate  satisfied  because  they  have 
never  received  such  prices  for  their  products 
before  and  that  the  poorest  laborer  can  com- 
mand five  dollars  a  day. 

I  am  told  that  while  the  people  of  these 
States  sympathize  with  Belgium,  they  really 
desire  to  be  kept  out  of  war  and  to  continue 

20 


to  profit  from  the  necessities  of  France,  Italy, 
Belgium,  England  and  Russia,  but  I  refuse  to 
believe  it. 

I  refuse  to  believe  that  the  men  of  my  native 
State,  the  sons  of  the  men  who  left  their  farms 
and  unfinished  work  to  save  the  Union  and 
destroy  slavery,  can  be  bribed  by  prosperity 
and  high  wages  to  stay  out  of  a  war  that  they 
must  recognize  is  their  war  even  before  it  is 
France's  or  Belgium's  or  England's. 

It  is  with  shame  that  I  admit  that  a  consid- 
erable part  of  the  Electorate  of  this  country 
seem  actually  to  accept  the  counsel  of  irre- 
sponsibility, of  cowardice  and  of  inaction,  but 
thank  God,  my  adopted  State  of  New  York, 
closer  to  the  struggle  and  writh  a  keener  sense 
of  the  moral  issues  involved,  repudiated  with 
a  majority  of  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand the  pusillanimous  proposal. 

This  Western  country  may  have  seemed  less 
sensitive  to  the  moral  issues  involved  in  the 
struggle,  and  more  ready  to  accept  the  counsels 
of  caution  and  cowardice  and  covetousness,  but 

21 


I  refuse  to  believe  that  you  were  bribed  by  in- 
creases in  wages  and  higher  prices  for  the  goods 
you  have  to  sell. 

It  was  all  a  mistake.  You  had  not  taken 
time  to  think  it  out.  Already  I  see  signs  that 
the  West  is  ashamed  of  itself.  You  are  not  too 
proud  to  fight.  You  are  beginning  to  realize 
that  it  is  our  war  and  you  will  not  shirk  your 
responsibility.  The  people  are  looking  for  lead- 
ers, for  men  true  to  their  intellectual  ideals, 
men  of  mental  integrity  and  moral  courage. 
If  our  educated  men  fail  the  people  in  this 
crisis,  what  hope  can  we  have  for  the  future? 

It  is  exactly  for  such  times  as  these  that  you 
college  men  have  educated  your  minds,  opened 
your  hearts  and  cultivated  your  souls.  The 
time  calls  for  action  and  duty  calls  you  to  lead- 
ership. 


22 


fo4°*0r  iS*s»°saai**  »A*B 

^T^^^----^ 


YB  59277 


413144 


